De Novo Metastatic Prostate Cancer: Are We Moving toward a Personalized Treatment?

SIMPLE SUMMARY: De novo metastatic hormone-sensitive prostate cancer usually has a dismal prognosis, which has slightly improved in recent years thanks to the introduction of new hormonal agents and chemotherapy combined with androgen deprivation therapy from the first-line setting. The randomized clinical trials that have furnished the current therapeutic options stratified patients according to clinical criteria that do not necessarily reflect the biological rationale of the chosen therapy. With the accumulation of data on genomic features and transcriptomic profiling, several ongoing clinical trials are investigating new therapeutic approaches and the efficacy of a biomarker-guided treatment with the aim of defining a personalized treatment for de novo metastatic hormone-sensitive prostate cancer. ABSTRACT: De novo metastatic hormone-sensitive PC (mHSPC) accounts for 5–10% of all prostate cancer (PC) diagnoses but it is responsible for nearly 50% of PC-related deaths. Since 2015, the prognosis of mHSPC has slightly improved thanks to the introduction of new hormonal agents and chemotherapy combined with androgen deprivation therapy from the first-line setting. This review describes the current therapeutic opportunities for de novo mHSPC, focusing on potential molecular biomarkers identified in the main clinical trials that have modified the standard of care, the genomic features of de novo mHSPC, and the principal ongoing trials that are investigating new therapeutic approaches and the efficacy of a biomarker-guided treatment in this setting. The road toward personalized treatment for de novo mHSPC is still long, considering that the randomized clinical trials, which have furnished the basis of the current therapeutic options, stratified patients according to clinical criteria that did not necessarily reflect the biological rationale of the chosen therapy. The role of transcriptomic profiling of mHSPC as a predictive biomarker requires further validation, and it remains to be ascertained how the genomic variants detected in mHSPC, which are regarded as predictive in the castration-resistant disease, can be exploited in the mHSPC setting.